Four Hundred Years
by illuminatachime
Summary: AU. Derek wakes up in a forest, with no memory of how he got there. A strange boy with a painted face appears and Derek is suspicious of him, but the boy seems familiar and Derek joins him, going on to discover what magic really is and how it affects his wolf. Others appear, and as long as he plays by the rules of a mysterious voodoo king, he'll be able to fix this mess.


All of his bones were cracking against each other, eager to _change. _The ground was soft but it gave him splinters as he felt his form shift halfway, then back to human again. Derek writhed on the ground for minutes before waking with a start; when he looked up at the sky, he saw that it was broad daylight…and that he was in the middle of a forest. "Hnuagh!" He flinched into a crouching position, his eyes wildly focusing on everything at once. Tree, tree, bush, tree, stick. No humans. No hunters. No wolves. His bones drew up again inside him and he made a high-pitched keening sound.

"Dammit," he growled to himself. "Change already!" Who cared if it was the middle of the day? He was the _alpha._ He was alone, and he needed to change. He needed his teeth to lengthen and his muscles to stretch…then, he stiffened, his sharp ears picking up a clacking noise close by.

He heard the bones tapping against the boy's thigh far before he saw them dangling from the boy's hip. When his eyes trailed up to meet those of the newcomer, they widened as they took in the latter's face. Dark brown smudges lined his eyes like a raccoon, but this looked far earthier than an animal could. Derek gulped, his cheeks coloring as he realized that he was making himself the beta. _Stand,_ he commanded himself, and after a couple of tries, he mustered the strength to push himself up and face the boy, who was surprisingly not as tall as he had seemed when Derek was on the ground.

The boy's face was a mask; Derek wasn't sure if it was a literal mask or not, but he had a feeling it would look the same either way. Apathetic, unmoving, the boy showed no signs of even having _noticed_ Derek apart from the eerie, almost otherworldly way his eyes locked with Derek's, fixing the wolf with a passively intense gaze. He didn't blink, and his eyes didn't falter a hairsbreadth from their position.

Derek eventually lost the staring contest, looking over the boy with a slight contempt. It was hard to make yourself known as an alpha if your counterpart is acting like a living statue. _Maybe I scared him so badly that he literally froze,_ Derek mused, but as his eyes trickled downward and noticed the staff that the boy held – it looked like it was made of twine and small bones, like that of a bird or a rabbit, and…_a baseball bat?_ Derek blinked to make sure he wasn't imagining it, but when he opened his eyes, the boy had shifted closer.

Flinching, Derek bared his teeth a little before realizing that the boy had resumed his still pose. Taking the opportunity to give the boy another once-over, he saw that the boy was barefoot – dirt was caked around the soles of his feet and his toenails, and his legs were bare except for a piece of brown leather wrapped around the upper half of his right calf, stopping just below the knee. He wore shorts that were loose and looked like a pair of stolen, cut-off khakis that a Lost Boy had worn through the muddiest parts of Neverland. The hem of the shorts stopped around the middle of his thighs, and he wore a sort of sash around his waist. It looked to have once been a deep shade of red, but it had faded and browned, like blood. Knotted in it were bigger bones than the one on the staff; Derek _hoped_ they weren't human bones, but the more and more he looked at them, the more his mind convinced itself that they were those of a child.

The boy's hipbones peeked out above the waistline of his Lost Boy khakis, lean and bordering on the type of skinny that only addicts and starving people get. His chest and abdomen, it seemed, were covered in gritty-looking claw marks. War paint, Derek guessed. There were strange markings on the boy's arms as well; down his right arm, it looked like a bird's feet had been set on fire and it had walked down the length, from the shoulder to the middle of the forearm. Around his upper arms were strange markings, like triangles, circles, lines that made a ring around his arms, and two or three squares. To Derek, it either looked like someone had played tic tac toe in another language, or someone had tried to give the guy some meaningful hipster tattoos.

The boy wore a headdress, a crown with short pieces of wheat sticking straight up that featured little ornaments hanging down; a braid that obviously didn't come from the boy himself was tied to the left side, beads and pins secured tightly into it. It fell over the boy's shoulder, and Derek wondered if he ever stabbed himself by accident with the pins. Small red dots peppered the headband, but Derek couldn't make out if they were gems or feathers or what.

A cord necklace was tied around the boy's neck, and little teeth – certainly human this time – were beaded onto it, along with two keys. The boy wore many bracelets around his right wrist, but none of them looked like something had died to make them. Good grief, now Derek understood vegetarians.

The boy was still staring at him distantly, so Derek assumed the boy wasn't posing an immediate threat. Clearing his throat, Derek planned to say something intelligent, but all that came out was, "What's with the getup?" and a douchey finger pointing at the Lost Boy khakis, which were going to be a hipster trend someday, he was sure.

"Getup," repeated the boy slowly, as if he were trying to recall something. Then, he nodded, like he understood, but he gave no answer; Derek didn't really want one anyway.

Looking the boy up and down, he noticed that the person standing in front of him wasn't so much a _boy _as he was…what, exactly? He didn't look anything like a man – his limbs were still gangly like a teenager's, but his eyes and his expression…

"You're _ancient,"_ Derek said, aghast and staring at the boy with new eyes. "How…? What is this? Where am I? Who—" The boy raised his eyebrows and Derek realized he was babbling like a drunkard. Trying to sound a little more intelligent, he rubbed his shoulder and stated calmly, "I woke up…here. I don't know what happened." The boy turned his head to the left, exposing his right ear to Derek. Part of it looked as if it had been bitten off, and Derek's eyes widened again. A scar marked the boy's right cheekbone, and the teeth on his necklace seemed to thrum as if alive. "You're ancient," Derek breathed once more.

This caught the boy's attention again. Turning his eyes back to Derek's, he opened his mouth and spoke the first words Derek had heard that day. "You're ancient, too." The right corner of his mouth twitched upward in amusement, but as Derek was quickly learning, all of this boy's expressions were fleeting.

Far off in the distance, it seemed, a chord was struck. Someone banged a drum just once, and Derek's mind snapped around what the boy had said. _Ancient. I'm ancient, too?_ he puzzled, his eyebrows drawing together in confusion. "What do you mean?"

The boy gave another half-smile, then turned, shaking his head and leaning his staff into the ground. It had a miniature skull stuck on the top of it, and Derek resisted the urge to ask if the boy had killed any babies recently. The teeth at his tan collarbone and the small bones at his hip clacking together, the boy started to walk away. "You've been asleep for a while," he said cryptically. "Things have changed, Derek."

Derek had started to follow him, but the mention of his own name made him stop in his tracks. "How do you know my name?" he demanded, feeling like his head was about to explode from confusion…and the nasty headache that was budding at his temples. "Who are you?" he asked again.

The boy turned and gave Derek a testy look, but then when he saw that the werewolf wasn't kidding, his eyes widened a fraction before returning to their hardened gaze. "You don't remember me," he said, as more of a statement than a question. "I wonder why. But…that makes sense, somehow."

_What makes sense?_ Derek wanted to growl, but the boy had turned around and begun walking again. Falling into step behind the boy, Derek grumbled internally, sticking his hands in his pockets. His black jacket, a dark t-shirt, and jeans were pretty much all he wore anyway, so he didn't worry that some weird person had made a switcheroo while he was unconscious and taken an article of his clothing to Lost Boy land.

He followed the boy for what felt like hours, and maybe it could've been; the boy obviously didn't tire easily and he himself was…a werewolf. He could handle taxing situations. Right?

…Right.

They came to a stop in front of a tree, and the boy leaned his staff against the side of the trunk, giving Derek a warning glance as if to say, _try to hit me with this and I'll kill you. _Derek shrugged his nonchalance, musing that he could easily break the boy's neck. The kid was so scrawny, you could almost mistake him for a giant walking stick.

However, something about the boy's wiry muscles tickled the hairs on the back of Derek's neck. They seemed…feral. Like that of a werewolf. But this boy wasn't a werewolf; Derek would smell it. He'd smell it all over the forest.

Grabbing the bark of the tree with his hand and prying with his nails, the boy ripped open a doorway, leading into darkness. Derek blanched. "You live in a _tree?"_ he asked, his voice hissing as if he were a serpent. "What the hell. What the absolute hell. Where am I?"

The boy rolled his eyes. "Just shut up and go in, Derek. It's my home. I'm not going to hurt you." He gestured towards the hole with the bark. "I'll explain, I guess."

"Why do you keep acting like you know me?" His voice sounded a little too desperate, and the boy raised his eyebrows again. Derek shook his head, trying to clear it. "L-Listen, I woke up in the middle of a forest and some weird hipster guy comes and tells me to climb inside a tree? You'd be confused too."

The boy remained silent, leaning against the bark as he had previously his staff. Resting his chin on his hands, he said in a tight voice, "I'll explain this to you inside."

Derek scowled at him for a moment before ducking into the tree. The boy seemed oddly familiar, and it tugged at the back of Derek's scalp to think that something had screwed with his memory. He went down a ladder and found himself in a wide room, with sunlight shining through windows dug in the ceiling. Everything looked yellow in the strange light.

The inside of the tree was cluttered, gritty with dirt having fallen from the ceiling or tracked in by the boy. Baubles and mason jars, paper and knives covered the surface every table in sight.

A lizard crawled around one of the mason jars and caused Derek to jump; he was too on edge to get a proper feel for this place. It seemed okay enough, but something was missing and he didn't know what. The smell of the forest around them reached into the tavern, wet mud and leaves, and he took a deep breath, listening for the sounds of birds and crickets. They called out to him just as much as the smell of wet land did. He'd never properly existed as a werewolf in places like this; he'd kept to the dry, barren woods for as long as he could remember. It reminded him of home.

"Where are we?" he asked, his own voice surprising him. It seemed wistful and curious like a child's. Turning, he faced the boy, whose dark eyes stared at him again, unblinking. Little spots of light from the windows made the boy's eyes glitter like dark stars, and Derek breathed in slowly through his nostrils, smelling all of the powders and plants and salves that the boy had stored around the room.

He smelled salt and honey, different types of spices whose names he couldn't remember, lilacs, burning wood, dust, berries, and so on. The boy leaned against the wall by the ladder, crossing his arms and shifting his eyes to his bare feet. "It's called Orlens. I call it Orlens. As far back as I can remember, the people who live North call it N'Orlens and L'Orlens. I don't know about now."

"Orlens," Derek repeated, nodding as if it made sense. "And this earth is ancient too?"

"Hasn't the Earth always been ancient?" the boy said, raising a finger to rub his lip. His head dipped forward and he watched Derek with careful eyes, his face still a mask with no emotion. "The time that's passed and made _us_ ancient would seem like nothing to the earth."

Derek stared up at one of the windows. "But the earth has changed, too. Beacon Hills wasn't this…wet."

The boy shrugged, peeling off the wall and walking towards Derek. Derek flinched, but the boy simply walked past, and when Derek turned to watch him, he saw a purple-brown curtain draping over a part of the room that he hadn't had time to stare at. Unsure if he should follow the boy, Derek waited in the middle of the room. "You're both right and wrong," said the boy, "in the sense that Beacon Hills wasn't this wet and that the earth has changed too. But you're wrong because you think that where we are is anywhere close to Beacon Hills."

Derek frowned. "Then where are we?" He walked towards the boy, and the boy held the curtain open for him. Hesitating, he passed under it after a moment, then stood and raised his eyebrows at the boy, waiting for an answer.

The boy sighed, giving Derek an exasperated look that seemed all too familiar, but he couldn't remember why. "Orlens," the boy said slowly, as if Derek were a dumb child. "As in…New Orleans."

Everything seemed to go silent for a minute, and Derek felt the blood rush to his head, as if this was the most shocking revelation of the day. "We're in…Louisiana…?"

The boy nodded. "Technically, yes. We're standing on the farthest north point of Louisiana that's safe to inhabit, right now. The rest, as the world kept telling everyone, went underwater."

This room was darker than the last; no windows were cut into the ceiling. Three beds were set up around the room to the right, each against a separate wall. Derek was still busy comprehending everything the boy had told him, but he asked, "Does someone else live here?"

"More or less," said the boy. He moved towards the bed on the wall opposite the door, and Derek watched him steadily. The boy moved with purpose, but it was different from the way Derek knew normal people moved. It seemed as if this boy was carrying a heavy burden on his shoulders and trying to make it look like it didn't faze him.

_Ancient,_ thought Derek. He had so many questions to ask but right this moment didn't seem like the proper time – when did he ever choose the right time in the first place? The boy squatted near the bed and pulled something out from underneath it: a box, painted black and raked with deep scratches; scars that would never heal against its old body.

Derek stood just inside of the door, feeling awkward as he watched the boy open the box and begin pulling out different objects with his long, dexterous fingers. "Sit down," murmured the boy without looking up, as he finished emptying the box. Turning it over, he smacked a palm against the bottom of the box, and dust fell out in rivets.

Sitting on the bed across from the boy, Derek braced his hands against the mattress and pushed up, hoping he didn't seem too uncomfortable. He wondered if this kid was a hoarder or not. He'd never been much of a hoarder himself; other than a few sentimental boxes stored in each of his relatives' rooms, he'd thrown everything out after the fire.

And he imagined that the things the boy was sorting through were sentimental as well – a picture frame, a little doll, a barrette, a bracelet, and a little notebook. They looked like they hadn't been touched in years, and Derek's rapid-fire questions bubbled to his mouth, ready to spill out and demand answers.

"Who are you?" was his first question. He stood up, angrily pacing towards the boy, but slowed when the boy looked up at him with apathetic eyes – eyes that had almost a _warning_ to them, as if to say, 'You don't want to do that, boy.'

As if he was older and wiser than Derek.

"How did I get here? Why don't I remember anything? Why was I unconscious?" Derek spat, feeling his wolf seeping through his body like adrenaline. "Why are you acting like you know me?"

The boy stood abruptly, his eyes flashing. Raising his hands as if to tame Derek, he said, "Derek, I think it'd be best if you would calm down. There are things that need to be sorted before I tell you what you missed."

This made Derek's temper flare. His eyes glowed red as he started towards the boy, a growl forming in his throat. The boy stood his ground, leaning against his bone staff and watching Derek with a steady gaze. Derek wished he could smell fear on the boy, but he was only met with the dead-calm demeanor that the boy possessed.

All at once, a strange sensation rumbled through Derek's core, bubbling and setting his teeth on edge. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up like a wolf's hackles, and he crouched, backing slowly towards the corner as he watched the boy, who stared at him unblinkingly.

After about thirty seconds, the feeling vanished and Derek slumped, eyes widening then narrowing as he stared back at the boy. "Was that you?" he asked, and realized he didn't need a response – of course it was the boy's doing. "How'd you do that?" he demanded.

The boy stopped leaning on the bone staff and sat back on the bed, leaning the staff in between his legs as he continued his search through the trinkets he'd poured onto the mattress. "It's been a while, Derek," he said heavily. He seemed to find what he was looking for, and raised a hand, showing Derek a crumpled piece of paper.

Derek stared, unsure of what to do. He was very unsettled by everything that wasn't being explained, so he just sat on his haunches and watched as the boy unfolded the paper, holding it delicately as if it were an ancient artifact.

"This is a list," said the boy, unfolding it. "Of things…people…that happened to me. I keep it so I don't forget. But sometimes things fall through the cracks, little things that probably aren't important, but it bothers me so much to the point of panic attacks and losing time from insanity. I feel like my brain is deteriorating sometimes, you see."

Derek nodded. "I see," he said, his voice shaking.

The boy nodded as well, then spoke again. "I'm acting like I know you because I _do_ know you, and in fact, you know me too. You're here because you walked here, although I suppose you don't remember that. You came here with me and a few others. And then, all of you…all at once…went to sleep."

Derek paced back and forth, this time not wary of the boy giving him the hairs-on-end feeling again. Shaking his head and letting a low growl whistle through his teeth, his hands formed claws as he tried to make sense of everything. "You're lying," he spat. "You're lying because you know my memory's…"

The boy stood, holding out his hand to Derek. It was cupped around something, and Derek held his hand underneath the boy's. A small, cold object dropped into his hand and he snatched it away, gripping it close to his chest before opening his hand to reveal the locket resting in his palm. It was gold, because silver would've irritated her skin…

_Oh._ Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes and fought back the telltale tears, made sure the boy wouldn't see him falter more than this. His hands were large and his fingers were thick, and he had difficulty opening the locket, but he got it eventually. The clasp fell open and Derek saw the pictures inside, and they tugged at his heart. Tracing a nail-claw gently along the picture to the right, he recognized himself as a child, grinning and standing next to his sister…Laura. Little memories called out to him from the recesses of his mind; it was like unlocking a door. On the other side of the locket was a picture of his parents and uncle, all smiling.

"This…this is Laura's," he said quietly, in disbelief. "She…gave it to me before…"

Then all the memories came flooding back, and his legs gave out from under him. He fell to his knees and elbows, closing his hand around the locket before it could smash against the floor. A wretched, angry cry ripped out of his throat as he held his head in between his arms, blocking out all the light. He howled again and the entire room reverberated from the sound waves.

_Fire. There had been a fire. Charred wood was everywhere. He was running through the wreckage, stomping on little fires and swatting them with his jacket as he plunged through the remains of his house, looking for…for survivors. All too soon, he came to face the bodies, crushed under the house, skin black, with the smell of burning flesh swallowing him whole. Their faces were still frozen in screams…_

…_and then, after years, they found her. Chopped in half, in the woods. By their own uncle._

"Oh," Derek whimpered, his teeth elongating painfully. "Oh…god." Years of loneliness and frustration came rushing back to him, their long whips scoring him painfully across the back.

"Derek," a voice said abruptly. "Derek, you have to get up. You've been through this already. You've survived."

Opening his eyes, his vision blurred as he lifted his head and saw the boy standing over him. "What else?" he asked hoarsely, looking past the boy to the remaining trinkets on the bed. "What else do you have to kill me with?"

The boy gave a magnificent eye roll. "Those aren't yours and they won't help you," he said simply. "Stand up. You still want answers."

Derek blinked slowly and lowered his gaze to his hands, half-transformed into claws. The locket was warm in his palm and he pushed himself to his feet, dusting himself off out of self-consciousness as he avoided the boy's eyes. "What else?" he repeated, this time with a stable, quiet voice. "You said the others fell asleep, right? Who are the others?"

Raising his eyebrows at Derek, the boy turned to Derek's left and looked at the door to the room, as if he hoped the others were going to walk in right then and there. Nostalgia colored his face and he lifted a hand to count on his fingers as he said, "Scott. Allison. Lydia. Jackson. Isaac. You."

Memories flitted through Derek's head as he nodded, recognizing each of the names. Scott, with his crooked jaw and boyish demeanor; Allison – the huntress – with her bows and arrows and her love for Scott; Lydia, with her red hair and her scientific brain and her immunity; Jackson, with his sharp words and eternally pouty face; and Isaac, with his curly hair and his uncertainty and his loyalty and his soft-spoken attitude that was underlined by something harsher.

"Scott," Derek said, nodding to himself as he counted on his own fingers. He could feel the boy's heavy gaze on him as he looked at his hands. "Allison, Lydia, Jackson. Isaac…"

One memory was lodged in one of the cracks in his brain, and he took a mental icepick to it as he tried to grasp what he was forgetting. Then, all at once, it gave way to a sea of rushing memories as if he'd uncorked a champagne bottle. Squeezing his eyes shut, he allowed the new information – if it could be considered new, as it was already very old – into his consciousness, and when he opened his eyes again after a minute, he stared at the boy in disbelief.

It was easy, now, to look past the scrawniness and the mud smeared across the boy's face. His dark brown eyes and serious expression had followed him all this time, but the goofiness seemed to be missing. Derek recognized him, one hundred percent, and wondered how he could ever forget someone who had been…so annoying…

He stared, wordless for a moment, and the boy looked down in a sort-of nod, as if he could read Derek's thoughts. For all Derek knew, he could. Stepping forward, Derek met the boy's eyes once more like he was uncertain of his own mind.

"Holy shit," he breathed. "_Stiles."_


End file.
